"Market Basket is an excellent grocer, and we are confident this marks the beginning of exciting things to come at The Downs." As the Press Herald reported, developer Peter Michaud made that comment when the grocery chain first signed on, in the fall of 2024. For most of the two years since, "fall 2026" was the only timeline anyone would give for when the doors would actually open. That vagueness ended in September. Mainebiz reported on September 22 that Market Basket is now hiring for the 80,000-square-foot store, with equipment already moving into the building at the corner of Market Street and Scarborough Downs Road. The company is telling people to expect a November opening.
If you drive Route 1 or cut through on Payne Road, you've watched this site sit half-finished for a long time. The grocery store getting a real date matters. But it's only one half of what's actually happening at the old racetrack property this year, and the other half runs on a completely different clock.
The wait that just ended
Market Basket will be the fourth Maine location for the Massachusetts-based chain, joining stores already open in Biddeford, Westbrook, and Topsham. The Scarborough store is expected to stock more than 50,000 products and employ around 300 people, making it the first anchor tenant to actually open inside The Downs' 40-acre Town Center. Costco opened at the edge of the property's separate business park off Payne Road back in 2023, so this isn't the first big retailer to land here. It's the first one inside the section the town has spent two decades trying to build.
That two-decade point isn't an exaggeration. Scarborough's Comprehensive Plan has called for a real downtown since 2006. The 577-acre property changed hands under contract 17 times before M&R Development bought it in 2018, mostly for casino and hotel proposals that never got built. When M&R closed on the land, it was valued at under $8 million and generated about $146,000 a year in property tax. At full build-out, the development is projected to add more than $615 million in new value and generate upward of $10 million a year in tax revenue. As NEREJ reported, Scarborough Town Council member Jon Anderson put it simply when the town center's first buildings got approved: "For 20 years, Scarborough residents have wanted a true town center."
What actually opens alongside the grocery store
Market Basket isn't arriving alone. In mid-July, The Downs' developer announced that Verizon, NBT Bank, and Maine Community Bank had all signed leases in the same stretch of the Town Center. NBT Bank is building a 2,000-square-foot branch right next to Market Basket, its second location in Maine. Maine Community Bank is putting up a 4,000-square-foot branch on Market Street near the Allagash Scarborough taproom, which opened in 2025. Verizon is taking just over 2,000 square feet in a building called The Breakaway.
Here's what's open, opening soon, and still further out:
| Status | Business | Location detail |
|---|---|---|
| Open now | Alluxe Nails & Spa | Already operating at The Downs |
| Open now | Allagash Scarborough taproom | Opened in 2025 |
| Opening November 2026 | Market Basket | Corner of Market St. and Scarborough Downs Rd. |
| Opening November 2026 (estimated) | Verizon | Ground floor of The Breakaway |
| Under construction, 2026 | NBT Bank | Beside Market Basket |
| Under construction, 2026 | Maine Community Bank | Market Street, near Allagash |
| Opening spring 2027 | Café Luna | Ground floor of The Breakaway |
That last line is the part worth sitting with.
The local business piece runs on a slower clock
Café Luna isn't new to Scarborough. It already operates on Route 1, along with a sister location in Falmouth. What's changing is that the original Scarborough spot is closing and the business is relocating into The Breakaway, the same mixed-use building where Verizon is setting up. According to the developer, that move isn't expected to happen until May 2027, roughly six months after Market Basket's registers start ringing.
The Breakaway building itself carries some deliberate history. It's named for a horse breaking away from the pack, a nod to the site's run as a live harness racing track from 1950 until 2020. A local artist is being commissioned to paint a building-sized mural on the south side depicting that history. Café Luna will take about 2,616 square feet on the ground floor, and there's roughly a half-dozen more storefronts in the same building still being marketed to small, local restaurant and retail tenants who haven't signed yet.
That's the piece that separates this fall from what comes next. November brings the businesses that make errands easier: groceries, banking, a phone carrier. The plans for something that feels like an actual Main Street, a coffee shop you'd walk to, storefronts run by people you might recognize, are still filling in on a slower timeline. As of mid-July, more than 240,000 square feet of commercial space was under construction across the Town Center, with 70 percent already leased or purchased. The remaining 30 percent is where the local flavor still has room to land.
Who this is actually for right now
The Downs isn't a blank lot waiting for a first resident. There are already roughly 700 homes and about 1,000 people living in the neighborhoods off Route 1, plus around 50 businesses and 1,500 employees working in the commercial district off Payne Road. The Town Center is being built to serve people who are already there, not to lure anyone in from scratch. Michaud made that point directly when the bank and Verizon leases were announced, saying the new businesses would deliver convenience for people who already live and work nearby.
The street running through the middle of it is being designed as a woonerf, a European-style shared space where pedestrians, cyclists, and cars share the same surface with foot traffic given priority. It's meant for outdoor dining, seasonal markets, and the kind of loitering that a strip mall parking lot doesn't invite. That's the long-term vision. This November, what you'll actually be able to do is buy groceries, open a bank account, and pick up a phone plan within a five-minute walk of each other for the first time in Scarborough's history. The version with a mural, a relocated neighborhood café, and a handful of small storefronts still waiting for tenants is a spring 2027 story.
If you're weighing what a corner storefront in The Breakaway or a small retail space along Market Street might be worth to your own business, that's a conversation I have often with entrepreneurs looking at Southern Maine's growth corridors. Shivam Kumar works both sides of that question, residential and commercial, and is always up for talking through what a spot like this could mean for you.
